France & Mali: Left assesses Mali military intervention and its aftermath

March 30,
2013 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Two leading
voices against France’s military intervention in Mali, Paul Martial and Bertold
du Ryon, have written a comprehensive dossier on the subject. It is published
in the weekly print and web bulletin of the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) in
France, Tout est à nous, dated March 14, 2013 (#186).

The dossier
is a valuable overview of the situation in Mali and stands out for its
unyielding opposition to the intervention. That’s no small feat in a France
that is awash in national patriotism and anti-Islamic prejudice over the issue.

The
intervention was planned and initiated by a Socialist Party president and
government. The Communist Party of France is an enthusiastic backer. Sadly,
leading spokespeople of the Left Front (Front
de gauche) electoral coalition (in which the Communist Party plays a prominent
role) have chimed in for the war.

The dossier
reviews the economic and strategic interests that have propelled France’s
intervention. These include the protection of its resource wealth, notably the
vital uranium mines in neighbouring Niger.

The
authors describe France’s role more broadly in the region, “which it doesn’t
deny, and which is acknowledged by its partners, to assure the stabilization of
the French-speaking African countries for the benefit of multinationals
exploiting mineral riches and seizing control of arable lands” [translation]. The
dossier looks at recent flashpoints of the French role.

France has
intervened consistently in Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) over the past 10 years,
including spearheading a coup d’etat in 2011 that decided the outcome of a disputed
presidential election. It has repeatedly intervened in Chad to assist in
putting down rebellions against the dictatorship of Idriss Déby Itno. Not
coincidentally, the Chadian army has been fighting alongside France in northern
Mali this year, the only African army to do so. If they were writing the
dossier today, the authors would add the Central Africa Republic to the list.
There, the ruling dictatorship aided and abetted by France over the past 10
years is coming apart.

The dossier
examines the grave humanitarian issues facing the Malian people. These include the
hundreds of thousands of refugees who are victims of the drought conditions in west
Africa in recent years, those who were driven out of their settlements in
northern Mali as a consequence of the Mali army’s military offensives of recent
years, and more recently the smaller numbers of people who have been victims of
the well-armed and -financed, right-wing Islamist forces that muscled their way
into the north of Mali during the past several years.

The dossier
examines sympathetically the long-standing, national rights struggle of the
Tuareg national minority, whose homeland includes parts of the north of Mali.

Summarising
how France views what it has accomplished in Mali, the authors write, “France
and its elites believe they have re-legitimized a prominent political, economic
and military role for themselves in their post-colonial ‘sphere of influence’
[west Africa]. But even if the peoples of the region take some comfort from the
departure of the jihadists,[1]
they will not be duped about the intentions and neo-colonial interests of
France” [translation].

The
dossier in Tout est à nous and
related analyses of Mali by these and other authors leave some important aspects
of the situation unstated or even misrepresented. This contribution will attempt
to fill in the story.

Tuareg history

Martial
and du Ryon tell much of the essential story of the national rights struggle of
the Tuareg people. But they leave out several important chapters. The most
important is the repression directed at the Tuareg in recent years by the Mali
army and government. While it is true that the Mali government has conceded measures
of autonomy and social/economic development in the north at different moments over
the past few decades, it is also true that these measures were given grudgingly
by the Mali side and that much of Mali’s elite and army tops never really
accepted them. (A similar process has occurred in neighbouring Niger.)

A major
factor in the army coup of March 22, 2012, was the accusation by army officers
against the government for having negotiated autonomy concessions in the first
place and for not adequately supporting the army in its military efforts to
undo them. The Mali army has been waging a war of considerable intensity
against the north in recent years. Martial and Du Ryon do not mention this in
their summary of Tuareg history.

Nor do
they mention the serious, hair-raising even, reports of human rights violations
committed by the Mali army as it has re-entered the north in the wake of the
France invasion. These have been extensively documented by some French media
and by leading, international human rights organisations. The Mouvement National de Libération de l’Azawad
(MNLA) has condemned France for refusing the MNLA’s demand that the Mali army
not be permitted to re-enter the north.[2]

The
website of the MNLA as well as sympathetic websites (Toumast Press)
contain detailed reports of kidnappings, summary executions, forced
dislocations and even poisoning of water wells in Tuareg regions. The practice by
the Mali army of poising water sources in this desert region dates back to the
very harsh and violent battles in the early 1960s waged by the newly
independent Mali against the Tuareg, then a nomadic people being forced by a
range of circumstances into sedentary lives.

The
authors stress that the Tuareg are but a minority of the Mali population, even
in the north, and that the MNLA does not speak on behalf of the entire Tuareg
population. These are important matters, but they do not negate the Tuareg
claim for national rights. What’s more, there are other nationalities in the
north that also face political exclusion and discrimination. They are less
socially cohesive and less well represented politically, so the relative strengths
of Tuareg political organisation is likely to their benefit.

The
authors criticise the MNLA for several key political decisions, including the
temporary alliances it formed with rightist, Islamic forces in 2011/2012 in its
effort to end the Mali army’s operations, and its more recent, limited
collaboration with France in operations against the Islamists since the French
invasion. They write, “The totally adventurist and unprincipled political line
of the MNLA has caused much harm to the Tuareg cause.” There is truth in this
claim, but a description of the incredibly difficult circumstances in which the
Tuareg are asserting their rights would help in presenting a fair, overall
picture.

The
authors mention the summary execution of up to 100 captured Mali soldiers in
the northern town of Aguelhok on January 24, 2012. They acknowledge that
accusations against the MNLA are unproven. The massacre is under investigation
by the International Criminal Court.

Weakened and bloodied Mali

Martial’s
and du Ryon’s account of recent years in northern Mali reports on the rights
violations and ruthless conduct of the rightist Islamists in the north. Though
mainstream press reports on the subject are no doubt exaggerated, it is certainly
a major concern of the Mali people and an important story to tell. But the
national minorities in the north were also victims of the Islamists. Their side
of this story is largely untold.

Mainstream
press (including, lately, a lengthy
article in the New York Review of Books) printed wild stories that the
few hundred (or call it a few thousand) Islamists were poised to take over the entire
country of 15 million people! This was also the pretext peddled by France when
it delivered its snap announcement to invade Mali on January 11, 2013 (the
announcement was snap, but the invasion plan certainly was not).

Too few
are asking how it is that a country of 15 million people with an army trained
and supplied by the US and Europe for at least the past eight years would
apparently be so vulnerable. But the truth is that Mali is a desperately poor
country, one of the poorest on Earth, going nowhere but backwards in its social
and economic development, and its people have been excluded from any meaningful
role in determining their future.[3]

Many in
the mainstream media have presented Mali as a former oasis of democracy in West
Africa. It was anything but. Bruce Whitehouse, author of the blog Bridges from Bamako, writes, for
example, that Mali’s elections have consistently had the lowest voter turnout in
west Africa, never higher than 50% of the voting-age population and 40% of
registered voters.

“At a
fundamental level”, he writes recently, “most Malians didn't feel represented
by their elected officials and the problem was growing worse. According to the Afrobarometer
survey, public satisfaction with Mali's democracy had been falling for a decade
by the time the [2012] coup took place.”

In other
words, the people of Mali are victims of a neocolonial regime and its close
ties to the US and France. All of them, or at least 99 per cent or so, have a
common interest in finding solutions to the economic, political and
environmental crisis that is wracking the country.

Mali’s political left

Unfortunately
for Malians, much of its political left is associated with the moderate left in
France that initiated or supported the intervention. It has little or nothing to
offer to them. An example is the African Solidarity for Democracy and
Independence party (SADI). A participant in previous governments in Mali, today
it has a small number of elected representatives in the national assembly and
in local governments. It is strongly opposed to self-determination for the
national minorities in the north, apparently treating the national borders in
west Africa that were laid down by the imperialist powers decades ago as all
but sacrosanct.

The party
supported the military coup d’etat last year. It thought it was backing an
anti-imperialist act because army and coup leader Amadou Sanogo made demagogic
declarations against the limp, foreign protests against his coup. But less than
a month after his coup, Sanogo did an about face and said he would support
foreign intervention in order to help him restore “order” to the country. Sanogo
and SADI share an opposition to the national minorities, especially toward the
Tuareg who delivered a succession of humiliating defeats to the army in 2012.

SADI is
presently offering a critique of the French intervention. But its main
criticism is that France is not facilitating a more direct role for the Mali
army in the military operations in the north. This is reminiscent of some on the
political left in Haiti who supported the coup d’etat of February 2004 and then
several years later began to offer critiques of the United Nations MINUSTAH
military mission brought in to run the country. Their criticism is not worth
much if it doesn’t explain why MINUSTAH is there in the first place.

Tout est à nous features an interview with a leader of SADI in
its most recent issue. The interview is taken from a valuable and informative
website edited by Paul Martial, Afriques en lutte (Many Africas
in Struggle). Afriques en lutte
is a broad-based information service and it does its readers a service by
publishing an interview with SADI. But the NPA journal should provide necessary
background so as to not leave its readers a false impression of SADI.

No to the French intervention

In
numerous articles in Afriques en lutte
and Tout est à nous, Paul Martialhas stood against the chauvinist tide
and explained that nothing good can come to the people of Mali and of Africa
from the French intervention. The political organisation of which he is a
member, Gauche anticapitaliste (GA, Anti-Capitalist
Left), a constituent part of the Front de
gauche, has been rather low key in speaking out against the French
intervention. Martial has not.

But ongoing
discussion is called for on the left in France in its efforts to assist the
Mali people in resisting the foreign takeover and finding a new, anti-colonial course
for the country. For example, Martial co-authors an article in the second issue
of the joint-left publication of which GA is part, Traits d’union (March 2013), in
which the authors write the following:

The French
troops must withdraw [from Mali]. The Mali army must be given
the means and equipment to protect the north against a return of the jihadists,
including support from African forces respecting the country’s sovereignty.
This is the only course that could make possible a political solution—the
holding of a national conference to redefine the rights of the Mali people, the
control of their natural resources and the building of a independent and democratic
state [translation].

Earlier in
the same article, they write, “Mali needed assistance from the UN or the
African Union in order to get rid of the narco-jihadists that had established a
regime of oppression and terror.”

These are
frankly wrong recommendations. In the 60-year plus existence of the United
Nations, there has been only one UN Security Council-authorised military
intervention that could arguably be said to have been in the interest of a
people. That was the intervention into East Timor in 1999 that ended an
Indonesian genocide. It was successful because a broad-based and relentless
movement of international solidarity was able to exercise defining influence
over the course of the intervention (of which the Australian military was the
largest component).

Conditions
for a positive outcome to foreign intervention today in Mali do not exist,
regardless of whether the intervention is in the name of the UN or the African
Union. Different political and military options within Mali remain available, along
the lines of a political realignment in the country that, among other measures,
would respect the political autonomy of the north. The latter would pay serious
heed to the demands of the Tuareg people to get the Mali army out of their
territory and lives.

A joint
declaration on Mali by three parties from Burkina Faso, Benin and Ivory Coast
describing themselves as communist was published on Afriques en lutte on March 22 and it sounds a very troubling
signal. The statement is harshly opposed to the national minorities in Mali.
Terming the MNLA “a French-made creature”, the statement complains that the
Mali army has been prevented by France from entering certain areas of the north
and engaging in fighting (the area surrounding Kidal where the fiercest
killings by France and Chad against Islamists have been taking place and where
there is a large Tuareg population).

Broader region

The broad
backdrop to all the events in Mali has been the militarisation of the entire
region of west Africa that has been spearheaded by the United States since its
humbling in New York City on September 11, 2001. In 2005, the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism
Partnership was created with a view to drawing all the neocolonial governments
and armed forces of the region into a pro-imperialist alliance. Martial and du
Ryon overlook mentioning this all-important part of the story in their dossier.

They also make
no mention of the post-intervention,
imperialist political/military plan for Mali, which is to create a
Haiti-style, foreign political and military occupation force to run the country
for the foreseeable future. Even worse that the Haiti mission is the intention
to create two forces—one a “traditional” Security Council occupation force and
the other a military strike force headed by France and formally accountable to
no one but itself. (This second force was announced only recently, several
weeks following the publication of Martial and du Ryon’s dossier.) Barring a
miracle, this plan will gain assent at the UN Security Council in the coming
weeks.

While
numerous groups on the left in France have spoken out against the Mali
intervention, the NPA has distinguished itself with the consistency of its
pronunciations, published articles and protest actions. Afriques en lutte has similarly distinguished itself with the scope
of its online reporting. They and others on the French left who are speaking
out are crucial allies as the peoples of Mali face extraordinary difficulties
in the wake of the consequences of the French intervention and renew their
struggles for sovereign and socially-just homelands.

[1] Any use of the term “jihadist”
in this article is in quotations from other sources. I consider the term
inappropriate and prejudicial and therefore do not to use it.

[2]Azawad is the
name given by the Tuareg people to the homeland that they share with other
national minorities and that encompasses territory in five countries—Algeria,
Libya, Niger, Mali and Mauritania.

[3] The Sahel region of
Africa, where Mali is located, is experiencing a long-term drought. The Sahara
Desert is expanding by 48 square kilometres per year according to some accounts.
The trend has led to mass migrations, malnutrition and thousands of deaths.
Mainstream news reports on Mali have confused matters enormously, conflating
the humanitarian consequences of long-term climate trends with the conflict
with Islamic fundamentalists.